OT again... is there an IMAP expert in the house?

[Donn Cave]

Quoth "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net>:
| "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
| news:<Rwq58.23265$8b.933505 at atlpnn01.usenetserver.com>...
|
|> So why not write a process to collect emails using POP3 (much easier than an
|> SMTP server) and insert them in a local NNTP server. If you could persuade
|> staff to reply to the newsgroup as well as the customers it seems that might
|> give you a lot of what you want, no?
|
| The key element missing is the ability to track disposition.  If a
| newsgroup article is responded to, no record is kept *with the original
| post* AFAIK.  Am I wrong?

No, nor necessarily right.  The usual NNTP server software wouldn't
do any such thing, but you don't want any of that stuff anyway.  You
want NNTP (maybe), but you sure don't want USENET!  On the other hand,
I believe any normal NNTP client can be expected to post replies back
to the same server it got the message from, and will annotate the
header with the original message ID.  From there, it ought to be
straightforward to match them up and maintain whatever records you
want.

You'd have to train the users to avoid reply by SMTP.  There might
also be a problem with client seen/unseen expiration, if you want
people to keep seeing that message until it's answered or something.

| The customers (and I) would like to be able to see at a glance which
| messages are not responded to; this leads back to an issue tracker.

Can't think of any really slick way to do that.  You could probably
get away with an edit to the header subject line - I don't think
clients cache that stuff, but I could be wrong.  Otherwise, maybe
move the answered messages to another "group".

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu